Of course you're right, and I agree that it won't be any time soon. But, as you mention, they are starting to show up in high-end laptops. I recently saw one with an 120GB SSD that runs Windows 7. The disappointing lack of progress in battery technology is likely to drive the development of this low power alternative.

@Gary..Yes, Long term SSDs will win out... But to reiterate what you said... When will that be?

I have started purchasing hybrid 500GB drives. There is a definite performance boost over the HDD but not as good as a full SSD. These are just starting to filter into laptops and PCs. The datacenter is the next step.

True, SSD's are still a lot more expensive per Gigabyte than hard drives. But, SSD's, are after all, semiconductors, so their prices can be expected to relentlessly track lower. Hard drives are mechanical devices, so they can only be expected to get marginally cheaper. In the end, SSD's should take it all, but who can say when?

This is a good, tough-minded approach to Flash. I suspect Flash drives in whatever form factor offer an opportunity to make the cloud a more practical adjunct to the enterprise data center. When a cloud application is dealing with data stored in Flash, response times to enterprise end users might more closely resemble those of on-premises apps. There would be tradeoffs. Not sure where the line would be drawn between those apps aided and those that become prohibitively expensive.

At some point, it seems like being able to afford at least an ALMOST all SSD data center become a competitive advantage. It will allow for the near-real-time predictive analytics that will let companies market much more effectively, for example.

Our latest survey shows growing demand, fixed budgets, and good reason why resellers and vendors must fight to remain relevant. One thing's for sure: The data center is poised for a wild ride, and no one wants to be left behind.